Fact: Distracted driving causes an estimated 6,000 fatalities each year in the U.S., and some of the more common distractions include texting, phoning or fiddling with a GPS.

Fact: An estimated 500,000 people are injured each year by distracted drivers.

I’ve made a vow to not pick up my cell phone while driving and have not been completely successful, but am making progress. Since I do a fair amount of road biking I’ve grown familiar with what it looks like for a driver to be distracted while fiddling with tech gadgets. I know I will be the big loser in any confrontation with a car.

The featured cop in this article waxes philosophical about the reasons he thinks people refuse to put down their phones and obey the intuitively practical need for the hands free law–he states that “people don’t like down time.” This speaks to a deeper issue–we may have allowed the ability of technology to keep us connected to determine our pace of life. We are more hurried, fragmented, and anxious about productivity than ever. One key to the effective, efficient, and overall healthy use of technology is an internal ability to know when it is appropriate to turn it off and disconnect. Adequate downtime is vital to productive and healthy uptime.